Who wants to work forever? No, I didn’t ask who wants to live forever, but who wants to work forever. When I got out of high school I said there’s no way I’m going to work till I’m old. Then I started working and wondered how I was ever going to get to stop working if they didn’t pay me enough to save for it. And there’s the kicker. You may not get paid enough, but you can most definitely saveâ¦..at least some or hopefully more.

But should you invest in a Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, 401k, 529 plans or maybe become a day trader? Good question, but one thing all of these have in common is they work off the principal of compounding interest. So before you learn about those investment options you must first learn and understand how compounding interest works. And by learning this you will want to seize the day and be on your way towards financial freedom.

Consider this:

If you started today, putting aside $100 every month and it compounded annually at a 7% rate of return (this is conservative), after 30 years you’d have $121,287. Or you could lock that up in a box under your floors and in the same amount of time it’ll total up to a whopping amount of only $36000. See the difference? (If you want to put in your own values, Google compounding interest calculator and try it out.)

Still not sure how compounding interest works? Don’t worry, I didn’t get it the first time I heard about it.

This example helped me wrap my brain around it.

First year: $1200 ($100 month) x 7% = $84 in interest

Second year: $1284 (1st yr) + $1200 (2nd yr) x 7% = $173.88

At the end of the second year you’ll have $2657.88 total when you only put in $2400. Follow this for 30 years and you’ll have $121,287â¦..don’t save early and in 30 years compounding interest will no longer be an option. This is a simplified example. In reality there are other options like monthly, quarterly, bi-annually compounding that you’ll need to consider. But the goal is to understand compounding interest and make it work for you.

Want to know how long it’ll take for your investment to double? It’s called the rule of 72. All you have to do is divide the rate of return (aka interest rate) into 72. The result is an estimate of how long it’ll take to double your value. For example 72 divided by 8% (interest rate) equals 9 years to double whatever amount you started with.

So what’s the deal? Why does it sound so simple yet all I hear is how everyone at retirement age hasn’t saved enough for retirement. Is the problem compounding interest or that people aren’t saving enough? Well, it’s a bit of both. The biggest catch to compounding interest is that the younger you start the more years your interest compounds and the more you have saved in the end. So you really do want to start now.

According to standardandpoors.com, from January 1970 to December 2009 (30 years), the average annual compounded rate of return for the S&P 500, including reinvestment of dividends, was approximately 10.1%. The S&P 500 is a good example because it is an INDEX fund that’s comprised of the top 500 leading companies in leading industries of the US Economy.

Here’s a little fun fact:

Warren Buffett, the founder of Berkshire Hathaway, started with only $9800 in 1955 and today is worth $44 billion.

In the April issue of ForbesLife magazine he said, The thing is, when I got out of college, I had $9,800, but by the end of 1955, I was up to $127,000. I thought, I’ll go back to Omaha, take some college classes, and read a lot–I was going to retire! I figured we could live on $12,000 a year, and off my $127,000 asset base, I could easily make that. I told my wife, Compound interest guarantees I’m going to get rich.â

This post was written by yours truly, Jon Elder. My mission is to help you succeed in your personal finance life. Join me on the journey to financial freedom! You can subscribe through RSS FEEDor EMAIL updates. You can also find me on TWITTER
and FACEBOOK
. Happy investing 🙂

This post was written by yours truly, Jon Elder. My mission is to help you succeed in your personal finance life. Join me on the journey to financial freedom! You can subscribe through RSS FEEDor EMAIL updates. You can also find me on TWITTER
and FACEBOOK
. Happy investing 🙂